


First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 13: Of Mages and Revolution

by SkiesOverTokyo



Series: FirstFan NaNoWriMo Drabbles [13]
Category: First Fantasy (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Backstory, Drabble, Other, fantasy communism, i have no idea how accurate this is to the backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 07:06:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16614236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkiesOverTokyo/pseuds/SkiesOverTokyo
Summary: Drabble set between Maria's death and main series for First Fantasy.





	First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 13: Of Mages and Revolution

Where does one begin with the tale of the doomed war of the capital?  
Perhaps it ought to start in the powderkeg of anti-imperial politics that was the Egg and Duck, where anti-theses to imperial rule were written, pamplets were printed, speeches made, and revolution plotted. After the street uprising, it, like any other hotbed of thought against the Emperor, was razed to the ground, and a non-descript little inn now sits on the site of that once pivotal institution.  
Turn the clock back but fifteen summers, and you would have found yourself in a roiling mass of radicalism, from anti-imperial to anti-government, to anti-nation to anti-anything that wasn’t arguing, getting drunk, and showing how incredibly intelligent one was to attractive women.  
  
So it was on the morning of Emperor’s Day, two years before the plots burst out into life and into chaos, violence, and the death of almost all involved. As usual for Emperor’s day, the fervence and violence of speech had rolled up a notch so that, by lunchtime, half the pub was drunk, the other half had spilled out into the streets near the dock to tell the passers-by that they were enslaved, shackled to a machine bleeding to death through its own corpulence, and a blow must be made to set them free, and fix the chaos that the Emperors and their line had caused, welding together disparate states into a place where no-one was happy and everyone was downtrodden but the rich and the Mages.   
  
To the dockworkers, they preached that, they, the workers, no longer had to struggle under the weight of cargo that they saw no benefit from, were underpaid for, and were damaged by. They received little from either group but cautious stares, threats, and occasional insults. They trekked back to the inn, dejected, seeking to drown their woes in cheap beer and each other.  
  
Polyov was the first to speak, when they had bought a new round, and settled themselves.   
“The way I see it, comrades”  
Polyov had one of those great voices for speaking, and a decent turn of phrase to go with it. In a few months, he would have rallies of hundreds eating out of his hand. A few months after that, he would be one of the few survivors of the failure of revolution, and a few days after that, he would be dying in a gutter with a knife in his back, as a young boy ran for his life. But that was the future. Polyov of the now had an audience of about ten, and most of them were drunk.   
  
“The way I see it, comrades, is we must be the dog to the sheep of the Empire. Now, you know, as do it, a dog with a bad master becomes a bad dog, becomes aggressive and violent. But if we wrest away the dog, become a guide, shepherding the people ourselves, for our master, the Emperor”  
He paused, and spat on the ground, rubbing the mark with the sole of his battered brogues.  
“Is intent on making mutton of the worker, not wool from his efforts, to fill his stomach, at our expense rather than clothe us, and keep us warm! We must wrest the Empire from the Imperial Family and their cronies!”  
A scattered, uncoordinated applause. Polyov was about to make the most of his audience, to enjoy the attention he gets, when Bukariv piped up  
“That’s all good and well, Comrade Polykov”  
“Polyov”  
“Poly…face. But, the fact is…”  
He paused to take a swig of his beer. Bukariv was little more than a student, from some Imperial Army college, with neither the stomach for fighting, nor that for violence. What he did have, as the following months would tell, was a head for organisation, and a mind that thought like any good commander until a sniper’s bullet went through the side of it in the dying hours of the revolution and decorated the walls with those clever ideas.   
“The fact is, it’s the mages, isn’t it?”  
“Bukariv, the mages are bourgeoisie. Mariks says, in his book, _The Fall of Empire_ ”  
“Mariks was a mage’s son and you know it, Polyrov. A bit of mage blood himself. Enough to get into that school of theirs”  
  
Bukariv spat on the floor, and adjusted his glasses.  
“Fuck mages. Fuck them and their fucking owls and higher-than-thou attitude. They have something that no-one else is allowed to use, and that’s not fair. You know what they did beyond the Edge during the last uprising.”  
He took a swig of beer  
“They killed mages, shamen. Fuck’s sake. Polyov, they killed women and children. Not the Empire, not the Imperial Army. The fucking mages. You’d allow people like that to remain alive after the Revolution?”  
“Well…” Polyov began…  
“I concede the point, Comrade Bukariv. The Imperial household and the Mages are in cahoots-both ancient institutions built upon the backs of the common worker, exploiting the worker, and they must both be torn down, and a free and equal practice of magic formed in its place…alongside the other institutional changes, of course.”  
  
“Let me buy you another drink, Comrade Polyov. Excellently argued as eve-“  
“So, how do you propose to get rid of a bunch of people who can outfight you, kill whole batallions at a time, maim and murder from afar?”  
The whole group turned. Comrade Iylat fell off her chair in the motion, and swore.  
Leaning against the bar was someone none of them had ever seen before. The first thing almost all of them noticed was the coat he wore, or rather the coat that reached the floor and hung like a tent around him-unmistakable against the leather was the tale-tale marks of blood.  
Young. Frighteningly young for the haunted look in his eyes.  
“Because I’m under the impression we may have an enemy in common.”  
  
The boy ordered a bottle of cider, deftly taking the top off with a fearsome looking knife at his belt, and took a swig.   
“So. I assume you want to destroy the mages guild? Mind if I ask why?”  
Bukariv addressed him curtly.  
“Young man, we wish to destroy that accursed organisation because it is part of the Great Work to make this world equal again. From the capital, the revolution will spread out across the Emp-“  
“You want to destroy them because they hold a monopoly on magic? Ok.”  
“Well, young man it’s more comple-“  
“Tam. Call me Tam.”  
“Tam…?”  
  
“Bargeld”  
“As in the thief Bargeld? You’re a thief? Has someone put you up to one of us as a mark? Does the Empire move against us alre-“  
“No. And I hate the name.”  
Tam Bargeld sat down on one of the bar stools, and took a swig of his cider.   
“You’re too few. Even if each of you were a mage, you’d still be too few.”  
“Well, the first stage of the revolution is to gather resources-peoples, weapons, recruit more and more until we are number enough for the next stage.”  
“And how many is that”  
A small huddle of Bukariv, Polyov and Ilyat, before they answered  
“Enough.”  
  
The boy snorted.  
“Enough. You don’t even know how many people you need to start this thing. I’ve heard enough. You’re a joke. All of you. And I can see the crossbow, by the way.”  
Comrade Pytr lowered the crossbow from behind Comrade Polyov, shamefaced.  
“You want to stand a chance?  Find people who hate the Empire, and hate the mages, and build something positive from that. Do that, and I might show my face around here again.”  
  
He downed the rest of his beer in one, and turned to go. Comrade Bukariv finally found his voice.  
“And what about you? Why do you hate mages so much, thief?”  
The boy turned back, face sliding from cocky grin to a cold glare  
“I hate them because I know how those poor bastards north of the Edge feel. I lost my friend to them. I aim to make something of this gift they would have killed me for if not for her.”  
He gestured with his right hand, a faint glow following the trace of his fingers, and Comrade Yara’s bottle of cider flew fully ten paces into his outstretched left hand.  
“And now you know why. Good day, _comrades_.”  
  
The door slammed, and the first meeting between what would eventually become known as the Red Company, and the young man who would become, anonymously, one of its few survivors, ended. The evening winded down, and Bukariv and Polyov found themselves drinking alone, in almost silence, Bukariv writing between sips. Finally, he got up to go.  
“Hey, Bukariv?”  
“Mnn?”  
“Wazzat?”  
  
Polyov gestured, somewhat drunkenly at the letter in Bukariv’s hand. Bukariv shrugged.  
“Letter to one of the other revolutionary groups, one nearest the Edge. Maybe that boy was right.”  
“Mmn. He’s just another gutter mage kid who didn’t get in, Buka.”  
“Maybe, but he’s got the right idea. And that’s no guttermage, Polyov. Anyway. Safe night.”  
And he was gone.  
  
Polyov sat for another ten minutes, in silence but the barkeep cleaning his glasses.   
_Bargeld_  
There was something about the boy. Something that he was sure would come with soberness and a good night’s rest. He dropped a thousand Gal bill on the counter, nodded to the barkeep, and stumbled home to bed.


End file.
